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Sunday in the Park

“She sensed that it was more than just an unpleasant incident, more than defeat of reason by force.” (p.99 ll. 12-13). And that is exactly what the reader realizes about this “unpleasant incident”: it turns out to be a turning point in the lives of this small family out to enjoy a peaceful Sunday afternoon in the park. – The short story evolves around the moral question of how to face up to brute force exemplified by the threatening man on the next bench; how do you defend yourself and your family? Do you have to resort to violence yourself – especially if you are a man?

Scary Movies

“The good fear was gone from the Roxy, replaced by the real thing”(ll.191-2). In this American short story, set in 1968 at the height of racial clashes in the US, the narrator, a white nine-year-old boy, is confronted with the harsh realities of life. He comes to realize that the comfort he has found in giving in to the pleasurable thrills of horror movies can no longer keep the horrors of real life at bay.

Sunday in the Park

Sunday morning at the baker’s; we are all patiently waiting our turn when a bodybuilder type of man enters the shop. He does not heed the many people already there, – who were there before him, – but marches directly to the counter pushing other customers as he goes; slamming his gloves down in front of the frightened, young girl behind it he barks out the orders for whatever it is he requires. – Aggression rises in the shop: this is not just a question of getting home quickly to your morning coffee, this is a moral issue: the man has broken the rules: because he is “big,” he apparently feels that normal, civilized behaviour does not apply to him. – How do we – the rational, civilized, peace- loving people in the shop deal with that in a way so that we can keep our self-respect?

Sunday in the Park

“Survival of the fittest”: that is the order of things, just like Darwin said, is it not? – If “fit” means physically strongest and most aggressive, it seems to apply to the short-story, “Sunday in the Park,” where we meet two men and their families: a “real” man and an intellectual, weak one who cannot even defend his own child, because he afraid to fight. In that way brute force wins over reason and justice, and that is not an outcome that sits easily with many of us. What is it the author is trying to tell us? – That even in everyday situations we have to defend our values even if it costs us a bloody nose? – That in order to defend peace we have to turn violent? If we don’t, we shall lose our self-respect?

Scary Movies

What on earth makes people pay good money for tickets to horror films that are guaranteed to scare them out of their wits? One explanation could be that the imagined horrors in films make the real horrors of life seem more bearable, but the nine-year-old narrator of this short story learns that this is not so. He is an avid fan of scary movies, but the frightening racial disturbances in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968 make him realize that there is no escaping the horrors of real life.

Sunday in the Park

Example one:

Most people do not care for confrontations with their fellow men; we have only survived as a species because we stuck together in groups with a social order; confrontations and power struggles would mean pain and death and threaten the social order and harmony of our family group. Knowledge of that is part of our genetic heritage, and it fits in well with the way we see ourselves now: as civilized beings, who rate intellectual strength higher than brute force. Occurrences where the brute defeats intellect and reason are therefore deeply disturbing to all of us, – and certainly to the small family that we meet in “Sunday in the Park”: How can a reasonable, peace-loving man defend himself and his family thus keeping his wife’s respect, without turning into a brute himself?

Example 2

How should we deal with bullies? – How do we hold our own and keep our dignity and self-respect without resorting to threat and violence ourselves? There are no easy answers to that, but the way we handle that kind of confrontations may have lasting influence on our lives as shown in the short-story “Sunday in the Park”, where a small bully in a sandbox causes a conflict to break out not only between families, but also inside one, triggering a (fatal?) rift between husband, wife and child.

Scary Movies

Horror movies seem to have universal appeal from Godzilla in Japan to The Chainsaw Massacre in America. Audiences seem to enjoy the thrill of seeing other people in frightening situations, maybe because it can make them forget for a couple of hours that it is a dangerous and scary world out there. Or maybe it makes them feel better equipped to deal with the horrors of reality. However, the narrator of this short story learns that this is not true. The nine-year-old boy is an avid fan of scary movies, but the frightening racial disturbances in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968 make him realize that there is no escaping the horrors of real life.